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Consciously for some, subconsciously for others, we stuck our toes ever so briefly into the waters of our destiny and took a stab at change. Change for good. Change for bad. Change for no reason at all. We romanticised the only era that would ever really be ours. Some took it very seriously. Some didn't take it very seriously at all. And some, like recent high school grad Susanna Kaysen, were simply interrupted. On the road to find out, Susanna discovered that, in her case, "do your own thing" entailed an eighteen-month stay at a mental institution.
Based on Ms. Kaysen's autobiographical account of the same title and adapted by director James Mangold, Girl, Interrupted is a high-minded, charitable little effort. It is full of astute if familiar characterisations, a sprinkling of psychological insights and a coup d'etat performance by Angelina Jolie who steals scene after scene from lead player Winona Ryder. It even has the good sense to know that its socio-historical commentary is as modest as it is sound. But the competently told saga just isn't intriguing enough to sustain its lack of cinematic oomph.
The year is 1967. And it's shades of Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate -- the feminine take. Winona Ryder is affecting enough as the interrupted girl in question, uncertain of her values and lately being pressured into charting a course. When folks ask Susanna what she plans to do following high school, she informs that she hopes to write. At which point her inquisitors politely iterate, "Yes, but what do you plan to do?"
As if in answer to all these questions, Susanna falls asleep at high school graduation. And back home at her posh suburban digs, she has increasingly come to commit the various and sundry faux pas, which proves especially embarrassing at any of mumsy and daddy's cocktail parties. She even has a little to-do with one of her male teachers. But when she decides that a bottle of aspirins followed by a fifth of vodka is just the ticket to get rid of the relentless headache that's formed a cloud above her pretty noggin, it's time for the psychiatrist to enter stage right.
At the shrink's office, she denies the suicide attempt. Both the doctor and parents wring their hands. What lack of responsibility! What chutzpah! How dare she not grow up according to their schedule? But it's probably her lack of contrition that brings institutionalisation to mind. However, because she's eighteen, Susanna's, alas, well-meaning parents can't commit her to a mental hospital. No problem, though. Their hardly subtle manipulation bullies the young woman into signing herself over to the care of seemingly civilised Claymoore.
Of course, it's a catch #22 situation; that is, she can't sign herself out. And hey, these people she's been huddled in with are really nuts. Georgina (Clea DuVall) is an inveterate liar; Daisy's (Brittany Murphy) eating disorder (which involves hoarding rotisserie chickens) approaches the bizarre; and everyone kow-tows to Lisa, the aforementioned standout performance crafted by Angelina Jolie. But here is also where great friendships grow, and where alliances form despite the various enmities that also fester. It is where daily realisations and sudden epiphanies of introspection are doled out wholesale. Thus what follows can be titled "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Lite."
The usual sorts populate Claymoore, but with the edges neatly sandpapered to disguise the stereotypes. Hence we are happily spared a Nurse Ratched. Instead, Whoopi Goldberg issues her kind but firm standby in the persona of Nurse Valerie. Jeffrey Tambor is the monotonic Dr. Potts whose name rhymes, we surmise, not entirely out of coincidence with crackpots. And heading the headshrinks is the dauntingly matriarchal Dr. Wick (Vanessa Redgrave), a female cross between Dr. Freud and a prison matron.
Upon her arrival, Susanna soon finds her ledge of comfort within the pecking order. Quickly affirming that she has a strong personality, she berths herself just a rung beneath Miss Jolie's wicked Lisa. If Dickens had penned Girl, Interrupted, Lisa's arrogant deceits and haunting visage would make her the Ghost of Sociopathic Present. She's been escaping from upper crust Claymoore for the last eight years, each time finding her way back to the security of its ready categorisations and diagnoses. She's their Peck's Bad Girl. She revels in the identity.
But Lisa is really a variation on Peter Pan, except that instead of refusing to grow up, she declines to get well. And she brags about it. Her cynicism and mock bravado are seductive. So naturally, everyone has a love-hate relationship with Claymoore's femme tres dangereuse. Susanna is no exception. And that's the problem. Instead of focusing with additional verve on Susanna's rather uncertain malady, which Dr. Potts quickly contends is borderline personality disorder, or perhaps delving a bit more into the cataclysmic times as they relate to the protagonist's plight, Mr. Mangold's script takes the form of a heroic struggle between the forces of good and evil. It is played out in traditional boarding school style, full of big and little secrets, some kept, some divulged.
Unfortunately, we've seen this triangle before: Susanna is the nice witch, Lisa is the bad witch, and good old Claymoore is the problematical symbol of authority that neither will submit to or ally with, even if it's to their advantage. Given the story's limited horizon's, the Misses Ryder and Jolie thrust and parry with the best of them. But the old ploy runs out of steam at about the three-quarter mark. While diverting enough to consider when it becomes available on video, Girl, Interrupted need not interfere with your regular moviegoing schedule.
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